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By Nate Raymond
Dec 10 (Reuters) - Two former BP Plc supervisors wonthe dismissal on Tuesday of some of the manslaughter chargesfacing them over the Gulf of Mexico drilling rig explosion thatkilled 11 people in 2010.
U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval in New Orleans dismissed11 counts of seaman's manslaughter facing Deepwater Horizon rigwell site leaders Robert Kaluza and Donald Vidrine.
But the judge refused to dismiss 11 other counts ofinvoluntary manslaughter, leaving those and a Clean Water Actviolation charge to be heard at a trial starting in June.
David Gerger, a lawyer for Kaluza, said he was reviewing thedecision.
A lawyer for Vidrine and representatives for the U.S.Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests forcomment.
Kaluza and Vidrine were the two highest-ranking supervisorson board the Deepwater Horizon when disaster struck on April 20,2010, sending millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf ofMexico.
The indictment accused the men of "negligent and grosslynegligent" supervision of testing at the well in the run up tothe explosion.
The charges were announced on Nov. 15 last year, the sameday BP agreed to pay $4 billion and plead guilty 14 criminalcounts over conduct leading up to and after the disaster.
A trial is currently underway in the case of anotheremployee, former BP engineer Kurt Mix, who is accused ofdeleting records related to the estimated size of the spill. Hedenies wrongdoing.
In his ruling on Tuesday, Duval rejected the arguments bylawyers for Kaluza and Vidrine that the Outer Continental ShelfLands Act did not extend federal law to the outer continentalshelf, where Deepwater Horizon was located.
But the judge accepted the defendants' arguments that theseaman's manslaughter charges did not extend to them as oil wellsite leaders with no navigation function on the DeepwaterHorizon.
Duval said his ruling was the first in the statute's175-year history to apply the law to a drilling rig blow-out,and he acknowledged the "risk of explosion on board deepwaterdrilling facilities is a grave matter.
But Duval said he "refuses to expand the scope of thestatute unnecessarily without certainty as to Congress' intentto do so."
The case is U.S. v. Kaluza, U.S. District Court, EasternDistrict of Louisiana, No. 12-cr-00265.
